wAInachten - Xmas Data Story

Did you ever wonder what AI can do for businesses? And where is it standing in business terms? Who invests in it, will it ever make any profit?

In our Christmas card below, we provide a summary of the situation in terms of business, put it into context, and provide you with a few amazing examples of what AI can do.

And no worries - you don't have to explore it yourself if you don't want to, we'll guide you through the broad strokes in this blog.... so let's get going.

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Big ideas take time. A lot of the really good ideas in this world - like Christmas - did not end the way they started. In fact, a lot of ideas were not great when they began, but became great over time because a lot of people put a lot of hard work into making them successful.

Currently, we are seeing the start of AI. There are issues, there are uncertainties, and there are opportunities. But we think two things are becoming increasingly clear:

1. AI is here to stay

2. The people who learn this tool faster will have a significant competitive advantage over those who are slow

But big ideas also create big change.

We started off the analysis by looking at other big developments, primarily the world wide web. For this, we visualized the NASDAQ, the number of internet users and Amazon's net income and compared it to what people thought about these things at the time.

What becomes clear is this: most big ideas go through three phases.

1. First the idea is ridiculed. "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's" - Paul Krugman, nobel prize laureate and economist

2. Then the idea is fought against. Do you still remember those people who thought paper was better and more reliable? Or the companies that banned internet in the office because it was a "productivity thief"?

3. And finally, it is taken for granted. Think of the internet today. Who still questions it? And who would want to work without it?

So what does this mean for AI? Da capo al coda

Okay, sure. We know the internet is nice. But who invests in AI and how expensive is it anyway?

Most investments come geographically from the US (67B) and have a tendency to increase. Investments in Europe (11B) and China (7.7B) are going down in general.

The cost of AI models is becoming so large that primarily big companies can afford it. The model that was estimated to be most expensive was Gemini Ultra, valued at 191 million USD.

Concern: The enormous cost of AI makes people wonder whether it can ever generate enough value to make up for its cost.

But if people are investing this much money in it, is it any good?

The number of AI models and publications is unsurprisingly rising, with the majority of models coming from the industry.

AI has surpassed human performance on several benchmarks, such as image classification, visual reasoning and language comprehension. On the other hand, it struggles with complex tasks, such as visual commonsense reasoning "Why is the person in the picture holding an umbrella"? (Spoiler: because it's raining.)

One of the big concerns here is that AI tools are becoming really good at doing their thing, which means they can also be used to do that thing for a bad purpose. RFDiffusion, which can be used for genetic modification, for example, is great for creating new drugs, but terrible when used to produce new pathogens.

Down here we offer you 9 amazing AI examples, such as the nobel prize winning Alpha-Fold, with a summary and a QR code that leads to a relevant source.

Looking at these examples, we really believe that AI is one of the tools that you as an individual should be familiar with and that your company has to implement if it wants to be successful in the future. Because those who learn first have a great advantage.

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, don't hesitate to contact any of us. You can find our mail addresses in the team section and a telephone number. We would be happy to discuss and help!

If you have any questions regarding GenAI, let us know, we're happy to answer them! You can find our mail addresses in the team section and a telephone number.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! - Da capo al coda.